The importance of working environment- and the health status of workers on labor productivity´ is widely recognized. It has´ universally been acknowledged that a better working environment and a healthier workers lead to a higher, productivity. Documentation of this widely accepted "truth" is however, scarce in empirical studies of firms in. Korea. The objective of this study is to provide such documentation by a case study of three firms in Seoul, Korea.
The data are collected from ?three sources: (1) sampling 396 young female workers from three firms selected; (2) interviewing the supervisors and other management personnel of the three firms and (3) conducting physical and environmental tests.
The data collected from 396 workers include the general characteristics of workers, the perception about their health, working -environment and work satisfaction. The data obtained´ from the company supervisors and other management personnel are about workers´ wages, absenteeism,, turn-over rate, average length of employment working conditions, the quality of the company´ dining hall food, etc. The data obtained from physical and environmental tests are about the hemoglobin level of workers and air quality, noise level, temperature of the factories.
Two types of data analyses are conducted. First, as preliminary analyses, cross-tabulations, frequency -distribution and Chi-squares tests are conducted. These are to obtain the feelings of .the data and to present the nature- of data about, the general characteristics of workers, their health status and working conditions. The second type of analyses consists of multiple regressions to estimate the effects of working environment and workers´ health status on productivity.
The results of the above analyses, generally support the hypotheses that a better´ working condition and a healthier workers lead to a higher productivity.
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